


On the Outside Looking Through

by junipermoss



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Can be read as slash, Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Happy Ending, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One Shot, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Sam Wilson, Short One Shot, or super close besties lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:14:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29875482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junipermoss/pseuds/junipermoss
Summary: He doesn’t know when it was, if it was a year ago or twenty, but he’s seen that face. He’s seen it  when he was strapped to a table, or the chair, restraints on his skin and hard rubber between his teeth and electricity splintering through his bones. He’s seen that face a picture of cruelty, a dark smile in a dizzy whirl of pain.The man shoots him.Or: Sam is there for Bucky when a mission goes south.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson
Comments: 5
Kudos: 93





	On the Outside Looking Through

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this quick thing as a way to procrastinate from writing my other, chaptered fic (which I promise I haven't abandoned!!). 
> 
> Warnings for canon-typical violence, blood, mental distress, etc. 
> 
> Thanks! :)
> 
> (title from Motion Sickness by Phoebe Bridgers)

Life should hurt more, he knows. Pain has been a constant, one that he doesn’t have the option to avoid. He’s out of control, falling into moments and missions, crashing against error and punishment and pain. 

But there is no pain now. There are, of course, the constant hurts: the old throbs in his scarred shoulder, the wounds healed wrong, that forever ache in his head. But there is little else. He flounders in this new life and feels almost nothing. He’s a ghost in a padded cell. 

Except there is no cell, because he’s free now, or something like it. 

And he’s not a ghost, because Sam talks to him like he’s there, and when Sam touches him—a solid arm around his shoulders, a light slap on his back, a gentle hand on his face—it doesn’t go straight through. He can feel it. He’s alive. 

Sam is beside him the first time he fails. 

They’re in a HYDRA base, a large underground expanse of frigid gray. Concrete walls stand stoic, machines blink, faceless agents hurl bullets toward them. Romanoff and Barton are on the other side of the complex, aiding Steve in whatever he’s trying to accomplish. Bucky can’t remember. 

There are two agents on Sam, but he’s doing well, alternating between kicks and punches and close-range gunfire. 

There are three on Bucky. Two are nearly on top of him, abandoning their guns for knives and fists, and there is one running toward him, probably ten yards away. 

Bucky grabs a wrist as it flies at him with a knife, twisting it until it cracks and catching the falling blade. He forces it into the other’s neck, then holds the body in front of him as a shield while the third agent fires. Bucky scrambles for the gun on his hip. He drops the body and dives to the side, ducking behind a half-destroyed machine of some sort and stealing a glance at Sam. He’s killed one of his combatants, and the other one is straddling him, Sam’s hand around his neck. The man punches him, and Sam spits blood from his teeth. 

Bucky cocks his gun and stands, whirling to face the agent stalking toward him. 

He freezes. 

The agent has removed his mask, and it sits in a limp puddle at his boots. He’s square-jawed and dark-eyed with hair cropped tight against his scalp, and his face is forgettable, generic and blemishless, but Bucky remembers it. 

He doesn’t know when it was, if it was a year ago or twenty, but he’s seen that face. He’s seen it when he was strapped to a table, or the chair, restraints on his skin and hard rubber between his teeth and electricity splintering through his bones. He’s seen that face a picture of cruelty, a dark smile in a dizzy whirl of pain. 

The pain finds him, and so does the fear. It devours him like it always has, running down through his skeleton and squeezing tight. It seals him in, inside the cold metal box mindless killers are meant to be kept in. 

The gun is still in his hand, but it may as well be a child’s toy, wooden and hollow. The man is staring at him and he cannot fire it. He can’t move. 

The man smiles. The gun wavers in Bucky’s hand. 

“Soldat,” the man greets. There is no other sound. Distantly, Bucky notices that Sam is standing now, watching him, the man who was on top of him now unmoving on the ground. 

Bucky doesn’t respond. He wonders, briefly, if he’s permitted to speak, if the handler’s words require a response—but that’s not his handler, and he’s not the soldier, not anymore. He grits his teeth. His mind is like a fragile teacup, overfilled, and he’s trying not to let himself spill away. 

“Buck,” Sam says, and Bucky holds onto his voice: that’s his name, he’s Bucky. 

The man before him smirks. “Buck,” he repeats, thick-accented and cynical. “Long time.”

It doesn’t seem like a long time, standing here. He feels like he was just pulled from the chair. He feels like he’s still strapped in. 

The man shoots him. 

The man shoots him and Bucky moves futilely to dodge. It catches him anyway, lodging in his side, and he gasps. Sam yells something and tackles the man, and then there’s a pandemonium that Bucky can’t register, yelling and fists on skin and gunshots. 

Shuddering, he leans against the decrepit machine. There’s a quiet agony in his abdomen but it’s difficult to feel. He needs to help Sam, to protect him, but he can’t move. He can barely see. His own gun is still in his hand, clamped between metal fingers, and he allows himself to drop it. He doesn’t hear the clatter, but he watches it fall. 

He hears ragged breaths and a rabbit’s heartbeat. He’s waiting for the restraints to tighten, for the chair to materialize below him, for the shocks to dive into his skull. 

There’s a hand on his flesh wrist. He flinches internally, but doesn’t move. Not when he’s not supposed to. 

“Buck?” 

It’s Sam’s voice, soft and warm. It’s Sam’s hand, gentle, on his skin. He looks up and it’s Sam’s eyes staring at him, laden with grief. 

“Sam,” he breathes. 

Sam nods. “Yeah. Yeah, Buck, it’s just me.” 

Frantically, Bucky looks over Sam’s shoulder. He finds the man on the ground, sprawled like a doll, his face glossed with blood. 

“He’s dead,” Sam tells him. “You’re okay.” He hesitates, bringing his hand away from Bucky’s wrist. “I’m sorry, I should’ve asked,” he says. “Can I touch you?”

Bucky swallows, but his throat feels like dry plastic. He nods. The hand comes back, another settles softly on his cheek. 

“You’re shaking, Buck, let’s sit down, okay?” 

He lets Sam lower him to the floor, arms winding around his shoulders and waist and supporting him as he goes. Sitting up is painful, tearing at the wound on his side, and when he gasps Sam lowers him until he’s lying down. He lifts Bucky’s head and sets it in his lap.

“It’s alright,” he tells him, running a hand over his hair, the other down the side of his face. Bucky’s still gasping, he realizes, each quick breath tearing from his throat. “Shh,” Sam says. “You’re okay. It’s okay.” 

Above him, Sam presses a finger to his ear. “Steve?” he says. “Bucky’s shot, we’ve gotta get out of here.” 

Bucky hears it echo in his own earpiece, and then Steve’s frantic, garbled response he’s not aware enough to process. Sam responds, and Bucky lets his eyes slip closed until a hand presses against the pain at his side and he cries out. 

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Buck,” Sam is telling him, but he presses harder, his other hand abandoning Bucky’s hair to fall on top of the wound. Bucky looks up and sees blood pooling between Sam’s fingers. 

“Sam,” he gasps, and Sam looks pained. 

“I know,” he says. “I’m so sorry. We’ve gotta stop the bleeding, though.” He looks around, scanning the sprawling basement. The basement stares coldly back. “And we need to get out of here.” 

“Okay,” Bucky manages, but speaking is becoming exhausting. The pain is dulling and Sam’s hands are sinking into blood and the floor must be turning to ice because he’s so cold…

“Buck!” he hears, and his eyes open again. Sam looks frantic, shouting in a direction Bucky can’t follow. His own teeth are chattering, and the sound reverberates through his skull. He can’t hear much else. 

Other faces come, then, blurry blobs, one framed with red hair. The other is closer, leaning over his face. He sees blue eyes. 

“Hey, Buck,” Steve says, his eyebrows creased. “Just relax, alright? We’re gonna get out of here soon.” He pauses, then adds, quickly: “But stay awake.”

He tries to answer them as they fuss around him, he tries to apologize for such blatant failure on the mission, but talking is almost impossible and they shush him when he tries. There are hands everywhere, at least a thousand, on his face and on his side, and he’s waiting for them to grab him roughly and force him up, but they don’t. 

The hand in his hair doesn’t wrench him up by the strands. The hand on his face doesn’t hit him. He wonders if he's dying. 

Then the hands slide under him and lay him on something soft, and he’s moving, steadying fingers lightly gripping his shoulders, holding his head steady. 

Sunlight. Red burning his eyelids. A prick in his elbow. Distantly: scissors tearing fabric. An engine starting. Movement, almost-immediate nausea. Darkness. 

He sees Sam first, staring up at a tiny TV in the corner of the room. There’s a man on it wearing a blue suit, holding a tiny microphone, speaking through the whitest teeth Bucky’s ever seen. 

The room is white, and so is whatever soft thing Bucky’s resting on. He feels like he’s in the Dead Sea, weightless. 

Sam’s hand is resting loosely on Bucky’s wrist. He wiggles it, slightly, but all that occurs is a fractured tremor. It’s enough, though, because Sam’s head whips toward him, his face brightening when he catches Bucky’s gaze. 

“Hey,” he says, leaning forward to brush a strand of dark hair from Bucky’s eyes. “Nice to see you.” 

Bucky furrows his eyebrows. “I feel weird,” he breathes, and Sam laughs, leaning back in his chair. 

“You’re on a pretty crazy painkiller,” Sam laughs, one hand carding through Bucky’s disheveled hair. 

Bucky hums. They hadn’t given him painkillers at HYDRA, but they’d considered it, murmuring of the drugs like a distant prize. The painkillers are wonderful, he decides. 

Sam is looking at him, smiling. His hand has moved to brush Bucky’s cheekbone, a soft back-and-forth. “Anything hurt?” he asks, softly. 

Bucky shakes his head, then leans into the touch, into its painlessness and warmth. He allows himself to accept, at least temporarily, that his life has grown softer, kinder, has slowed from its screaming frigidity to this quiet haze—that there are moments when he finds himself happy. Loved, even. 

“Nothing,” he whispers.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> junipermoss on tumblr :)


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